It is financially lucrative to feed the hate of millions of curmudgeons

This story appeared more than two weeks ago, but it has been a busy two weeks for me. On the positive side I can include a few developments since then. That story is a part of the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. Dominion accuses defamation because Fox News people said Dominion stole votes as part of their claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported the big development in the case two weeks ago. Though it is difficult to win a defamation case Dominion asked for summary judgment, asking the judge to rule on the case without a trial because they believe their evidence is so strong a trial isn’t necessary. It is routine for a defendant to ask for summary judgment, claiming the evidence is nowhere near strong enough for the plaintiff to win. It is rare for a plaintiff to ask for summary judgment. Clawson wrote:

That is what you call confidence in your filing. And the filing backs it up with page after page of quotes from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, showing that they knew the score. Maybe there were some true believers left at Fox, but they were not the majority. Fox News pushed lies about Dominion for its own cynical reasons. “This filing argues a fire hose of direct evidence of knowing falsity,” RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, told The New York Times. “It gives a powerful preview of one of the best-supported claims of actual malice we have seen in any major-media case.” (Actual malice is one of the legal standards such a suit has to meet.)

Clawson quoted some of the evidence, such Carlson saying “Sidney Powell is lying.” Of the claim of a stolen election Clawson wrote:

They knew it was nonsense, but they were worried about losing their voters to Newsmax and OAN. Trump supporters were already angry with Fox for calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night, and Newsmax and OAN were all in on election lies. Not alienating the Trump base meant Fox News had to offer those viewers at least some of what they wanted.

Jen Hayden of Kos added some next day commentary, saying that Fox News is a super PAC for Republicans.

Sure, Fox News skates the line by claiming its primetime superstars like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are entertainment and not actual news and therefore don’t have to follow journalistic standards. But does their audience really get that? And does supposed distinction matter when the network’s goal is to rile up its viewers to help the Republican Party win? It’s not just building up Republicans, though. Damaging Democrats and their agenda has been part of Fox’s core daily mission, too. Hillary Clinton was a near-daily focus for 25 years. Why? Because she was capable of becoming president. Because she was an adept messenger of Democratic ideals and progressive goals. And because it is financially lucrative to feed the hate of millions of mostly older, mostly white curmudgeons who tune in for the performative outrage.

Erik Wemple tweeted a thread, showing some of the evidence, now posted on Thread Reader. Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about Fox News’ reply to Dominion. That summary judgment is highly unlikely. But the reply comes down to “Fox actually has no answer to the evidence of wrongdoing.” Their response might as well be a confession. From about that time Greg Dworkin’s pundit roundup for Kos naturally has a lot of comments about Fox News. One is by Brian Stelter of The Atlantic, who quoted a former producer, who felt himself being brainwashed and becoming a Fox addict. That former producer said:

People don’t care if it’s right; they just want their side to win. That’s who this show is for. It’s sad.

Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon of a man watching Fox with a broken window behind him. He asks a boy, “Why’d you tell me you didn’t break the window?!” They boy, holding a bat with a ball nearby, says, “ ‘Cuz you like being lied to...” At one point Carlson had said he supports Putin, saying ... and here I’ll let a cartoon take over. It is by Andy Marlette and shows Carlson at his desk saying “What did Putin ever do to hurt me?! His desk sits on several murdered reporters and cameramen. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on Monday of this week that Fox News host Howard Kurtz, on his show Media Buzz addressed the question of why he hadn’t been reporting on the Dominion case against his employer. He replied that his company has said he can’t talk about it. Yup, the biggest story about Fox News is not being reported to Fox News viewers. On Tuesday morning NPR reported in a story by David Folkenflik:

In the heat of the moment, right after Election Day 2020, media magnate Rupert Murdoch knew that the hosts on his prized Fox News Channel were endorsing lies from then-President Donald Trump about election fraud. And he did nothing to intervene to stop it. Instead, Murdoch, the network's controlling owner, followed the lead of the network's senior executives in sidestepping the truth for a pro-Trump audience angered when confronted by the facts. Asked whether he could have told Fox News' chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. "I could have," Murdoch said. "But I didn't."

There are a lot of details in Folkenflik’s story. Sumner added some background to Murdoch’s blunt testimony:

As everything connected to the Dominion lawsuit has made clear, protecting the narrative—the one Fox wants to spread and has taught its viewers to expect—is everything. It’s not just worth putting on guests again and again when it’s clear they are lying; it’s threatening to fire a reporter for slipping up and telling the truth. To a degree that would be hilarious if it were not actively ripping apart this nation and others, Fox News simply made up whatever it needed to support its position. ... The most amazing thing about this lawsuit so far is that Fox hasn’t gotten out the checkbook to ask Dominion how much they would take to stop. Or maybe they have, and Dominion’s numbers had more zeroes than even Murdoch could squeeze onto a check. Or maybe Fox figures none of this ultimately matters anyway. Sure, they’ve admitted they lied. Yes, they did it to forward a greater narrative that is itself a lie. But their viewers aren’t going to hear any of this, and other lie-promoting outlets like Newsmax look like much less of a threat than they did at the end of 2020. So maybe Murdoch figures just plowing on through court is the better option. Anything, so long they don’t have to tell the truth on Fox News.

A couple days ago Clawson reported that Kellyann Conway, former advisor to the nasty guy, popped up on Fox News. Clawson wrote:

But it does seem like a message is creeping into Fox News coverage that might be a response to all this, an indirect way to instruct its credulous viewers on how to respond. The basic message is: “You’re going to be lied to anyway. You might as well be lied to by us.” ... There’s a reason that a 2012 study of political knowledge of people who watched different news networks found that Fox viewers were the worst informed. A 2020 study found that, while people who got their news from the Fox website understood political process as well as people reading other news websites, there was a “significant, negative relationship between visiting foxnews.com and facts about society writ large.” Fox News lies. It’s what they do. When they get caught, and their lies are indisputably revealed in public, their response is to try to convince their viewers that everyone else lies more. Which is another lie.

Kevin Siers tweeted a cartoon that shows a few news sources and their famous taglines. One is the Washington Post saying, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The one for Fox News is, “You can’t handle the truth!” Bob Englehart tweeted a cartoon of two guys fishing off the end of a pier and one hauling up bags of money. The other asks, “Rupert, more viewers, more money... What do you use for bait?” Rupert replies: “Lies!” One would think that one controversy swirling around Fox News at a time would be plenty. Alas, no. While all that was going on... Hunter of Kos reported:

In a bizarre development, Axios is now reporting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who owes his speakership to deals struck with House Republican allies of the Jan. 6 coup attempt, has given "exclusive access" to "41,000 hours" of U.S. Capitol surveillance footage from that day to ... Fox News' Tucker Carlson and his producers. Yeah, that Tucker Carlson, the promoter of white nationalist conspiracy theories and one of the Fox hosts that helped promote the false "election fraud" conspiracies Republicans used to justify attempts to nullify Donald Trump's 2020 presidential election loss. Tucker Carlson's team of conspiracy theorists is now being granted access to thousands of hours of sensitive footage from Capitol security cameras so that they can fish for new conspiracy theories defending the violent rioters. ... While McCarthy previously bleated about releasing the full Capitol footage to all of the "American public," when push comes to shove, he chose to hand it "exclusively" to the most pro-Putin, pro-rioter, pro-conspiracy far-right host on television. And that host will have his people looking hard for anything that can be used to launch their next hoax.

Frank Figliuzzi, retired FBI Assistant Director, tweeted that the videos reveal security camera capabilities, safe room locations, and more. Leah McElrath, expanded on that:

The footage provides anyone planning future attacks on the Capitol or lawmakers with invaluable information. Both domestic terrorists and foreign enemies will likely seek out the security footage. The release of this material to Tucker Carlson means that there are no more “safe rooms” for lawmakers in the event of an attack of any kind, plus all routes of escape are now known. I would imagine the Capitol Police and Secret Service are concerned about the release of the security footage to Tucker Carlson. Having the information circulating in the public domain to any extent makes their job of securing the safety of lawmakers and the Capitol challenging.

David Neiwert of Kos talked more about the security and propaganda issues.

As my colleague Mark Sumner commented today in our Slack channel: “I can't imagine what two-second clips he's going to splice together to prove the police baited Trump supporters into storming the Capitol, while simultaneously using freeze frame images to prove these were not Trump supporters at all. And just where was Nancy Pelosi walking in this shot? Was she opening a door so Antifa could get in?”

Neiwert reported on complaints by various Democratic lawmakers, then ended with:

Carlson, predictably, was unconcerned. "If there was ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that," Carlson told Axios. Carlson is now an established liar for profit. But then, as we have known all along, Carlson’s gaslighting technique isn’t so much a matter of his credibility, but rather, an expression of raw power. That’s what happens with men like McCarthy in control, and men like Tucker manipulating the masses.

Clawson reported that after the release of all that video Republicans are pretending to care about Capitol security. We wouldn’t want Russia or China to be able to get ahold of that data. Sorry – neither Russia or China has attacked the Capitol. Yeah, safety is not their priority. Sumner reported on McCarthy’s next step:

McCarthy claimed to have handed the videos to Carlson in order to make them available to the public. What he did was exactly the opposite of what he promised to do. All it would take to make the video fully available to the public is for McCarthy to make them fully available to the public. Just as the Jan. 6 committee made their final report and supporting materials available to everyone. It would take McCarthy not even one minute to order the videos placed on a government site where anyone could access them, look at them in detail, and see every image in context. Instead McCarthy gave the videos only to Carlson, a man who has consistently chopped up the news and patched it together in ways that generate false associations and unsupportable claims. In what universe would Kevin McCarthy handing over video to Tucker Carlson be considered making it “fully available to the public?” Why … in the one where McCarthy is making money off the deal. Which is exactly what’s happening now.

In this case, “making money” means political fundraising. Please send money. But wait! There’s more! Hunter reported that Rep. Barry Loudermilk has indicated that Republicans will support the release of some of these videos to help (I’m not sure how) defendants now facing federal charges in their roles in the violence. One can be reasonably confident of how Loudermilk expects the videos to be used. He’s the one who led a dozen people on a tour of the Capitol the day before the attack. One of his guests shows up on security videos taking photographs of staircases, directories, and security checkpoints, then boasting the next day, “There's no escape, Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, we're coming for you." Got a problem with that? This post marks the 900th time in 5031 posts I’ve used the tag “GOP”. I do have a lot to say about them. The next closest subjects of this blog are Gay marriage/Marriage Equality at 699 posts (though I don’t have need to write about it much anymore), personal stories at 436 posts, and the nasty guy at 416 posts (and he isn’t going away).